Hurley herself is apparently looking forward to the moment she never has to pose in a bikini again (although one fashion editor reports, “She is very confident in her body – I turned around and suddenly she was naked”). “Shooting bikinis is now my life, which, as you can imagine, is unmitigated hell,” she says, in her golly-gosh diction, which is peppered with words like “unpleasant-making” and “jolly”. “I can’t think of anything worse in the world than another bikini shoot – and I’ve got two next month. It’s unbearable, and I bring it all on myself. I’ve got nobody else to blame. It’s literallah torture. If you get a photographer you don’t know, of course, you think, ‘Oh God.’ But if you signed on for the gig, sadly, you have to go and be jolly in a skimpy white bikini. So I now rely on nice photographers, and a bit of retouching.”

Ah, yes, digital retouching. “I like a certain amount of retouching, like anybody,” she admits cautiously. “We all like to get rid of spots and shadows under our eyes. I’ve always been quite particular – I don’t like my face to be retouched. Often, people will want to correct one’s face, and with me, they always want to change my nose” – she squishes it – “and I’m like, ‘No, no, no, I can’t look like that. I don’t mind if you want to make me a bit thinner and a bit younger, but you can’t give me a different jaw or eyebrows.’ But the vanity retouching – well, who wouldn’t?”

Hilariously, Hurley’s retouching habit extends to her holiday photos. “I don’t have professional Photoshop, just the one that comes with your camera,” she says. “Every time I download my holiday snaps” – she lowers her voice for effect – “I always go over them. Just the red eye and colour enhancement. I don’t do any slimming, because you need a silly programme, but the colour enhancing is heaven.”

19 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Frankly, this is what happens when you're obsessed w/ your looks and don't develop character at some point. You get to be 40 something w/ little to say except bikini talk, expensive clothes, and zapping away your imperfections? She doesn't look bad, but she's looking fake....which isn't a good thing to me.

You know, I work in middle management in the creative industry. I manage a trade publication. Our last issue, we featured a very prominent Caucasian female CEO on our cover. We did not retouch her photos (although her skin was a bit rosier than I'd like the shots to be, and there was a slight sheen to her skin, I felt she had enough confidence and grace in her pose, her trademark blond curls and immaculate blue eyes speak for themselves). The CEO approved the shots herself.

A week after publication, we received an e-mail from a lady in Singapore who complained to us we "disgraced" the CEO, and the CEO "appears greasy and unfinished" and she went on to doubt our "professionalism".

Let's look at this as two separate issues: First, Elizabeth Hurley as someone who seems really entirely dependent on her looks for any income, and who is now, at the age of 43, in the rather unenviable position of only being able to get jobs because she is willing to take off her clothes. Considering her other options, she might just want to concentrate on other areas. Second, Elizabeth Hurley as an example of what modern culture does to women. The expectation probably for the last thirty years, if not longer, is that if you are extremely attractive and female, you don't have to develop your brains -- that your beauty is what you have "to sell". Additionally, if you want to rise in business and you are female, you'd better be very attractive because brains and skills are not enough. For all of the "women's movement" for the past fifty years, it seems that women really have not come all that far, that no matter how smart, how skilled, how clever, etc. a woman is...what matters in the end(and, to have a 43 year old woman, who has other business interests, continue to have her picture taken in bikinis..I think is an illustration of this fact)is how youthful she looks, how attractive she looks.

Complain, complain, complain ... now I know what the C in C list stands for. Liz, Posh, Jordan, they're all the same - everything is a nightmare, they suffer so the poor dears! Of course, we all know that if they stopped complaining they would slip back into the oblivion they came from and actually have to start working for a living! And we are talking about the Liz Hurley who called non-celebs 'civilians'!

The thing is they are all rich, which is the point for them. Whether this is ethical, moral or polically correct is neither here no there. The main aim of most celebs seems to be that they make money. Frankly they have all done well in this respect. It's true that for some of us Guardian reading women this is lowering and doesn't quite match with anything we feel to be morally right. But we live in a capitalist society.....

If I had Liz Hurley's money, I'd probably look more like her and less like me. I don't believe, for one nanosecond, her inane comments about exercise and so on. How much work she's had done, we'll probably never find out. And really, life is short; I couldn't care any longer than it takes to write this comment.

I believe I've heard that Elizabeth Hurley is currently a fairly prominent movie producer (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000167/). She also seems to treat her looks with a measure of honesty and self-deprecating humour. Now where have I heard that one of the effects of misogyny is to make women bitch more about each other's looks and ignore each other's achievements?

In response to bedaude, if Ms Hurley's talents as a movie producer are anything like those of her acting, I think we can all breath a sigh of relief! As I said yesterday at 11.34, moderately pretty girl + massive ego. On that she cannot be faulted!

About me

Linda Grant is a novelist and journalist. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000 and the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage in 2006. She writes for the Guardian, Telegraph and Vogue. Her latest novel, The Clothes on Their Backs was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. For further information including upcoming literary festivals bookstore readings etc see her website at www.lindagrant.co.uk